Reading through Pam’s reflection of previous conferences got me thinking about how often people will dig through old files, scrapbooks, folders, and websites and reminisce about days gone by. Often, cleaning out old boxes, one will find old papers, trinkets, and pictures from the past. With the advent of social media sites, web 2.0, and the Internet in general, that opportunity to look back and rediscover has become easier and easier. Finding pictures from say….last year’s conference, is just one Flickr search away!
So I thought I’d dig up pictures from last year’s conference that were posted to MACUL Space and share. SMILE!
Find more photos like this on MACUL Space
Be on the lookout for picture takers at this year’s conference; you too may be immortalized on the web!
Cross post from the Collaborative Tools for Learning Conference Blog:
The 2nd annual Collaborative Tools for Learning Conference, sponsored by the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) and hosted by the Ottawa Area ISD, will show educators how to make use of the next generation of technologies to support student learning and achievement. And we would like you to join us in presenting the new face of the Internet and how it can transform teaching and learning.
We are seeking educators who have experience in fostering collaboration and learning with the new generation of Internet tools and technologies to share your stories and skills with K-16 educators throughout the region in this new conference event. We want to explore how Web 2.0 and beyond can improve instruction, and we are looking for people like you to share your ideas.
For more information, check the Call for Presenters page or download the PDF document here
Whenever I come back from the annual MACUL conference, I’m always delighted to see the excitement on the faces of my colleagues that attended and read inspiring comments online. Almost everyone that attends finds some engaging new way to use technology in their classrooms or buildings. The new-found discoveries and energy can be contagious, and other educators in my building pouted about not attending after seeing how enthusiastic we were coming off the conference.
Find more videos like this on MACUL Space
Thanks to ETCC, MACUL’s Educational Technology Coordinator Conference, you can help share the excitement of the larger conference with ed tech leaders in your building. It’s next week, April 22nd at the Macomb ISD It’s not to late to register online!
It’s officially one week since MACUL 2008 closed it’s doors, but the conversations are still going strong, thanks in part to the terrific work from the MACUL Conference Bloggers! This year alone we amassed over 80 posts about the conference, dozens of comments, and have sparked several conversations (both online and face to face) about extending and enhancing the conference experience. Too often, I receive thanks for putting it all together, but I’m always quick to protest that it’s not me who deserves the accolades, but rather the teachers, tech-integrators, and all around incredible people that blogged at this year’s conference.
If you were a conference attendee and gave a little bit of your time to blog about the conference and included the tag “macul08“, my deepest thanks to you for helping provide a connected learning experience for us all. And of course, those educators that put in their time and effort several months in advance to blog here on the MACUL Conference Blog, please accept my most sincere appreciation and gratitude for going above and beyond your normal duties to provide both conference attendees and those following along from home such excellent coverage of the MACUL 2008 Conference in Grand Rapids! All of the bloggers did a fantastic job of paving the way for great discussions coming out of this year’s conference.
Just in case you wanted a recap of your favorite blogger’s posts, or if you want to thank them personally with a comment, just click on one of the blogger’s names and you can see all of the hard work they put into the MACUL Conference Blog.
Image: ‘THANK YOU‘
www.flickr.com/photos/45581782@N00/2086641
Congrats to all of my fellow bloggers for doing a great job covering this year’s conference. Special thanks goes to Ben Rimes for his leadership during this project.
It has been really nice to go back and read about sessions I couldn’t attend. I spent a huge chunk of yesterday afternoon using the stuff Hall Davidson presented on Google Earth even though I was presenting at the same time. I went to Ben Rimes’ GE session and took what I learned there and combined it with Hall’s links. Want to catch fish on Hutchins Lake in Fennville? Find the KMZ file here.
A handful of us covered the conference as “official” bloggers but we have 100s of potential bloggers. The beauty of a blog is that it is a two-way street. Now is your chance to share your favorite sessions and cool ideas you took away from the conference.
Whose session we haven’t discussed deserves some recognition? Let your voice be heard.
Whew! What a day and what a conference. The last session is about to begin… Hall Davidson is presenting on Thinking Big as the World Gets Small. As i’m sitting here everyone is looking around for the boxes…you know, the ones you put your nametag in to win fun and fabulous prizes. I’m pretty sure I’m going to win something good this time…
Hooray for Berrien Springs Middle School teachers (and the RBS) being mentioned by Hall in his words of thanks…
There is geographic shrinking…the world is closer than it once was. There is also a temporal shrinking…
Hall has had the pleasure of connecting with lots of educators…sharing connections and experiences.
We have all these tools…but as educators we are unstoppable and we find a way.
Kids are already in virtual communities…Club Penguin, for example. The distance between imagination and reality is shrinking.
How do we teach innovation? Start with what they have in their pockets…iPods and cell phones. iPods are being used to assist bilingual students learn English…there are a lot of other examples as well. Harvard, Stanford, and MIT all have course curriculum downloadable from iTunes.
(I only have 20 minutes of battery left…oh boy…)
What if Anne Frank had had a blog? Students have stories to tell!..and you can empower your kids to do it!
That’s all the juice I have…too bad I couldn’t say more, but I suspect there will be other posts on this session. I had a great time here in Grand Rapids and am looking forward to actually reading some of the posts here!
Yes, I’m blogging the Guerrilla sessions again, this is the last time, I promise. (at least for this year). I just left the XO-Laptop meetup. The XO’s were kind of cool, but they weren’t behaving right. They seemed to be having trouble networking with each other. Sherry seemed to think the MACUL network was inhibiting them in some way.
But, far cooler than the XO’s, sorry Sherry, we’re the two Pleo’s Karl brought with him. These little robotic dinosaurs will interact with each other or with people. Here’s a little video clip I shot of them with the iSight camera on my MacBook.
Michael McVey is a new professor Eastern Michigan University who began teaching a class, Web 2.0 Tools in Education, or something similar. He basically threw a huge number of Web 2.0 tools at his students to see which would stick and which would be thrown away. Everything was done in an online environment and he discovered that some work, and of course, some don’t.
Michael’s take on Web 2.0:
Recipients become Communicators…
How did they begin? Started by using Flickr…everyone understands photo sharing. What else did they use?
One of the first assignments was to create a social network on Ning. As they set up their social network, they were also researching sites and tagging them in del.icio.us. This then created a common pool of information to reference.
They used Doodle to schedule meeting times. They also dessiminated information by podcasting with Gcast…also used podOmatic.
Every student was required to set up a blog on Blogger, which Michael subscribed to via Bloglines. Bloglines is a aggregator that collects and keeps track of new entries to the blogs (and other sites) you subscribe to. Because students were connected to each other and the writing/sharing that was going on, their own writing was positively affected.
Students also stayed connected via Twitter. Wrote collaboratively with Google Docs and PBwiki.
Michael really enjoyed watching how deep and thoughtful student writing and ideas became.
What were some of the conclusions? (Oh…he’s going too fast.) Obviously, some good and some not as good. Probably won’t use Twitter again…it didn’t really help with collaboration.
Good job, Michael. You have a lot of first hand experience that benefitted the rest of us. The last session on Friday is probably the worst time to have your presentation, but there were lots of folks and everyone stayed until the end.
Google Earth is for a lot more than just finding your house or a place to get a tall, skinny, double, caramel macchiato on your way to Whole Foods.
Ben Rimes from Mattawan, MI demonstrated several of the many great learning tools located in the layers of the the standard edition of Google Earth.
Ben went on to show attendees all kinds of additional free online resources like Google Earth Blog and the perfect-for-integration Google Lit Trips. He finished by demonstrating projects produced entirely in Google Earth by his 5th Graders.
Check out Ben’s resources at his blog: Tech Savvy Educator.
I finally get to go a session! I have been presenting non-stop myself so now I get to relax and go to some sessions. Ben is an excellent presenter so I am looking forward to the session.
Ben’s handouts can be found at http://techsavvyed.net. Go to the left hand side of the page and there is a link called Presentation Links.
1. Find your house or your favorite location easily
2. The meat of Google Earth is the Sightseeing folder, Places, Layers, Panoramio (take a pic, upload it to the free site http://www.panoramio.com/ and your students will see the pics that describe the location)
3. There is a built-in ruler where you can do measurements. You can create a path between locations and measure the distance by feet, yards, miles.
4. By using the Placemark you can link to sites off of Google Earth or link to video clips from Discovery unitedstreaming etc.
5. You can turn on the Weather and view temps throughout the U.S.
6. 3D buildings is extremely interesting as you can create buildings in Google Sketch-Up and then load the buildings into Google Earth.
7. Global Awareness is important sites that describe the worldwide projects like Jane Goodall’s Chimp project.
Next we explored some sites
http://gearthblog.com Google Earth Blog
http://web.mac.com/jburg/Googlelit/Home.html Google Lit Trips
http://googlesightseeing.com
http://bbs.keyhole.com
You can track Santa!
You can view how the main character in Paddle to Sea makes his way to the Sea
You can view the Super Delegates throughout the U.S. and there are links to info about the Super Delegates
Seven Wonders of the World (see the largest KFC (Logo)
Great session Ben!
